bass fishing tips

A nice way to start the day on Lake of the Ozarks

One of the biggest mistakes that all anglers are guilty of is that they want to try and catch fish the way that they want to catch them. Instead of trying to figure out what the fish really want a lot of anglers will stick to their strengths and try and get the fish to bite the way that they want them. Sometimes sticking to your strengths works but if you want to win all the time an angler needs to be able to adjust to the fish and do whatever it takes to get them to bite.

There were many times over the past couple of years where my power style of fishing allowed me to catch a lot more fish than my fellow competitors because it fit the mood and activity level of the fish. Most of my friends who got in the boat were amazed at how fast I work my baits and that goes for my jigs as well as my plastics. There were plenty of times when my power approach allowed me to catch a lot more fish and come out ahead of the tournament field but there were also a lot of times when I would have a poor tournament because my style of fishing wasn’t what the fish wanted. Those where the days when I used to say that my fish left me or I never got on the fish or they just didn’t bite. The sad thing was that after looking back at those tournaments I was probably around the fish to win but I just didn’t fish right.

Last weekend I fished a tournament and we were met with cloudy and rainy conditions. Usually the first thing that comes to mind is to pick up a topwater bait and cover a lot of water when it’s cloudy. While all the books of bass fishing will say that those kinds of conditions are optimum for topwater fishing, I’ve really come to understand that bass don’t read books. We started off fishing a couple of docks and my partner was winging a Pop R trying to get in on a topwater bite. We went down this deep stretch of docks and I was able to put a couple of keepers in the boat throwing a plastic on the bottom. My partner continued to fish topwater even though I put a couple of nice fish in the boat. This went on for a couple of hours with our bites coming on plastics worked slowly on the bottom. We finally both were fishing plastics and we put together a nice limit that went about 15lbs to take 3rd place out of a 20 plus boat tournament. At the end of the day I saw how easily it is to get caught up with fishing the wrong presentation even though the bass could be in the area. While coming away with a third place finish was great if we had both thrown plastics the entire day we might have won.

When we get back to the weigh-in most of the competitors were fishing topwater baits or throwing spinnerbaits and crankbaits which didn’t produce. The conditions called for a topwater bait and everyone threw them to no avail. The whole day I was just waiting on a big bass to eat my partners Pop R or his buzzbait but at the same time it wasn’t what the fish were telling us to use. What separates some of the best anglers is their ability to fish what the fish are wanting and figure out what mood the fish are in day to day. I’ve been spending a lot more time on the water as of late than ever and it’s been teaching me a thing or two about how much fish can change from day to day. You got to be on your toes and be able to drop everything that worked the day before for what is currently working. It’s a really tough thing to do. If it was easy to do everyone would be able to catch them day in and day out. If you want to reach the highest level of tournament fishing it’s good to start with this mindset. Sometimes what it takes to catch the fish isn’t going to be the most glamorous but dragging a little worm on light line might be what it takes to cash that check or win.

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